River Swann
by HermioneGamer673
Summary: Jaelyn Swann is an employee at Mercury Labs with very important research. But when her office is broken into by a meta-human, the Flash dashes in and saves her. She seems fine, but when she gets home, she gets major headaches. It just keeps getting worse. By the time she calls her friends, Daniel Snow and Bianca Ramon, she's passed out and in unstable conditions.
1. Chapter 1

See you tomorrow, Jaelyn," called the middle-aged man as he left the laboratory.

"Bye, Ken," Doctor Jaelyn Swann muttered back, keeping her eyes on her work.

She didn't mean to be so detached; it was simply that she was doing an important experiment with two chemicals that would do a lot of harm if spilled. It was best for everyone if she just carried on with the experiment until it was done, to avoid any spillages.

Mercury Labs did very important research, just like Star Labs, though the former was ahead in that department ever since the latter's particle accelerator had exploded and essentially decimated the entirety of Star Labs. Even now, no research was being done there anymore. The owner of Mercury Labs was "cracking the whip", as it were, telling the researchers that now was the time to get ahead in the "science race." Hence Jaelyn working alone at once in the morning since midday the previous day.

Finally, the experiment was done. She put away the chemicals in their proper places and turned to stare at the clock, wishing she could go home now. No such luck. Now she had to write a detailed report on the experiment and its results. That was going to take at least another two hours. No sooner had she written the first few sentences than she heard the door open and the footsteps of two people entering. She glanced sharply up, unable to stifle a yawn, and saw her two best friends standing in front of her desk.

Bianca Ramon was tall, dark skinned, and black-haired. She was a detective at Central City Police Department, one of the youngest there at just age twenty-four. Despite her commitment to her job, when she was off the clock, she was often relaxed and a very kind person.

Daniel Snow was almost her exact opposite, looks-wise: he too was tall, but he was very fair-skinned, almost pale, and blonde-haired. He worked for Central City Picture News, and he too was among the youngest there, though he was only one year younger than Bianca. Just like Bianca, he was very committed to his job, often looking for a story even when he wasn't supposed to be.

"What are you doing here?" Jaelyn asked, yawning again.

Bianca lifted her arm and placed a white plastic bag on the table, and Daniel placed a thermos next to it. A little birdy told us you're working late," Daniel replied, grinning. "So Bi and I got you coffee and dinner."

"How'd you know I haven't eaten dinner?" Jaelyn asked in astonishment.

"The birdy told us that, too." Bianca smiled and pushed the thermos towards her, before beginning to unpack the bag. "We know Indian's your favourite takeout, so we got you that mild vegetarian curry you like. We also got you plain Naan bread."

"And we tried to order two poppadums for you," added Daniel. "But somehow, they messed up and gave you twenty. We ate two each, but you still have sixteen left."

-Me-

"Thank you, guys," said Jaelyn, sighing. "But I really need to work on my experiment. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Alright, but go home soon, okay?" said Bianca.

"Don't worry, This report shouldn't take too long. I'll get home soon."

Daniel and Bianca said goodnight and Jaelyn went back to her report. It wasn't until a half an hour later that she finished it. When she did, she packed up, ate her dinner and left to go home, just as always.

In the morning, Jaelyn was ahead of her schedule, so she went to work to get an early head start and maybe get to go home early. As usual, the Central City traffic was pretty awful, but not the worst it could be. Central City always had something going on.

Once she got there, she made her way up to her lab on the fifth floor, ready to start working on the next experiment as soon as she got inside.

When Jaelyn got settled, Ken came in with a serious look on his face.

"Jaelyn, did you finish your report on the experiment you did yesterday?" He asked.

"You know I would never leave this building if I was working in a project, Ken." Jaelyn answered, a little annoyed.

"Well, I knew that," he replied. "But I saw someone in here earlier who was looking through the filing cabinet over by your computer. I just wanted to let you know, in case there was an experiment in there that would damage or delay any research if lost."

Jaelyn was a little surprised. No one was supposed to be in her lab without permission. Also, she was sure she left the door locked last night. And even if she didn't, security locks all the doors at night again. Who could it have been and what were they looking for?

"Thank you very much for letting me know," Jaelyn replied with concern. "I appreciate it. If you could let me know if anything else goes wrong, that would be really great."

"Sure, no problem. I'll let you get back to work now. See you later." Ken said with a smile.

Jaelyn nodded and started working on trying to get a formula to help with Dr. McGee's latest project.

She worked on that all morning until around eleven, then went to go take a coffee break with Bianca and Daniel. She hadn't had much time to talk with them recently.

Jaelyn called Bianca and told her she wanted to talk for a little while during lunch break.

"Yeah, that would be great! I'm at a crime scene right now, so maybe in a half an hour?" said Bianca.

"Yeah, actually that's when I get off for lunch anyway, so why not?" replied a happy Jaelyn. "I'll call Daniel since it sounds like you have your hands full at the moment."

"Alright, thanks. See you in a little bit."

"Okay, see you."

After she got off the phone with Bianca, she called Daniel and had a similar conversation. So she went to go ask some questions and get some input on her experiment from some friends on the floor just below. Soon after she got down there, she heard thumping upstairs. Oh no, not again, she thought.

When she came back up to the fifth floor, she was horrified at the scene. There were a few dead security guards and blood everywhere, but it looked like there was someone in the building who was not very happy. Jaelyn rushed to her lab to call someone, anyone, but when she got there, someone was inside, looking for something.

She ran towards the next lab but slipped on a piece of paper that got scattered in the process. Unfortunately, the man heard her fall and went after her. Jaelyn got up and ran, but the man followed after her. She slipped and fell again, and the man caught up. She got a good look at him before he turned around. He had brown hair, blue eyes, and was very handsome. Jaelyn felt like she recognized him.

Jeremy Aspen? It can't be. He went missing over two years ago, She thought.

The man who she assumed was Jeremy said "Jaelyn, I feel like you have done nothing wrong to me, so I will let you live, but only if you can."

Then his hands formed a mist with a sort of dark blue color. The mist shot a poisonous chemical she knew. If it touched her, it would burn her, essentially. Chemical burn, which is much worse, and she would be in the hospital hanging on for life for weeks.

Jeremy shot the chemical from his hands right towards her but there was a burst of wind and red lightning entered the room, and suddenly, she was safe on the other side of the room in the arms of the Flash.

"Stay here, I can take care of him," he said, and sped over to Jeremy and handcuffed him with a beaker and some rope that was over in the supply closet. Why they had a rope in the supply closet, she didn't know.

After he got Jeremy under control, he got Jaelyn outside. Bianca and Daniel were outside waiting to see if she was alright. When they saw her, they came over and started asking all the "Are you okay?" questions.

"Jaelyn Swann, don't ever do that again!" said a very frantic Daniel.

"It's not like I tried to get cornered by a meta-human." replied Jaelyn.

"Today and tomorrow, you are staying home and relaxing and taking all that stress off, okay?" said Bianca, looking very concerned.

"That sounds very appealing to me, actually. I'll do that. But right now, I just would really like to just go home."

"Okay," Daniel said. "We'll see you tomorrow."

After they left, Jaelyn went to her car to go home. When she got to her car, she had a major headache. I really need to get home and get some sleep, she thought. And then hope it helps so I can go to work in a couple of days.

As she drove home, she got more stressed and more headaches. Once she got home, the headache was so awful she went straight to bed, even though it was the middle of the day.

Later, Jaelyn woke up in extreme pain. She called Bianca and could only barely tell her to get over to her house. By the time Bianca got there, she had passed out again.

Bianca didn't exactly know what was going on, so she called Daniel and a few other friends of hers and took Jaelyn to somewhere she would be safe. The thing is, Bianca and Daniel both knew what was going on with her. They just didn't know how to help.

 **Thank you so much for reading this! VibeQuake and I (HermioneGamer673) wrote this together and I couldn't have done it without her, seeing how this is the first story I've ever written. I hope it turns out well! If there's anything VibeQuake and/or me need to fix, tell us in the comments.**


	2. Chapter 2

"Jaelyn, you need to wake up," came Bianca's worried voice.

Jaelyn opened her eyes and found herself in some sort of lab or hospital. Around the bed she was on, there stood quite a few people, including Bianca and Daniel. She sat up but her head immediately began pounding painfully, so she had to lay back down.

"Don't sit up quite yet," said a brunette woman of about her age. "You've been having migraines from all the stress of the robbery and…other things we found when we ran tests."

"What did you find, exactly?" Jaelyn asked, concerned. "Is something very wrong with me?"

She tried to sit up again, but this time, it was Daniel who made her lie back down. "Jaelyn, please," he said pleadingly. "These guys will explain everything."  
Jaelyn forced herself to calm down, though many questions were circling through her addled mind, the most prominent ones being where am I and why am I here? She was worried that something might be seriously wrong with her. Why else was she in a hospital?  
She took a deep breath and looked the brunette woman in the eyes. "First of all, who are you?"

"I'm Doctor Caitlin Snow," the woman replied.

"Barry Allen," said a good-looking brown-haired man.

"Cisco Ramon, tech guy," added a black-haired man in a funny T-Shirt that said "I see dumb people".

After the only other woman in the room had identified herself as Iris West, Jaelyn noticed that there were three other men in the room, standing in a row with their arms folded. One was black like Iris, one was DRESSED in all black, and the other had blonde hair and wore a waistcoat.

Cisco rolled his eyes and pointed to each in turn. "The Sulky Squad over there is Joe West, Harry Wells, and Julian Albert."

"Sulky Squad?" repeated Joe, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not sulky," Harry and Julian said at the same time.

"I've been working with both of you for long enough to know that's not true," Cisco snorted.

Jaelyn realized that Bianca and Cisco had the same last name. So did Daniel and Caitlin. She was so overwhelmed with everything going on. Names and headaches and the robbery, she didn't know what was even going on.

I guess it's time to ask questions and get to the bottom of this, Jaelyn thought.

"Caitlin, can I ask some questions?" she said. "I'm just so confused."

"Of course," Caitlin replied. "It's completely normal to be confused after all of this."

"Okay then." Jaelyn said once she got most of everyone's attention. "Why do you and Daniel have the same last name? He's never said anything about you."

Caitlin looked a little relieved. "Daniel is my brother. I'm actually glad you haven't heard about me yet. I asked him not to say anything, but I'll explain that when you're...more ready."

"And since I'm sure you'll want to know," added Bianca, "Cisco is my brother. Same reason as Caitlin and Daniel why you haven't heard about him."

"Alright that makes a little more sense," said Jaelyn, relieved it was that simple. "But where am I and why?"  
Nobody answered for a little while. Jaelyn thought that was because she was in a hospital and about to die.

Finally, the one who called himself Barry said "You're in S.T.A.R. Labs because you called Bianca. But when she found you, you were passed out and in unstable conditions, so she called Cisco and brought you here."

"That about sums it up," added Bianca.

"Okay, I think this is the last one," said Jaelyn, feeling somewhat more stressed. "What kind of unstable conditions am I in? Please just tell me. I'm a scientist. I can handle it."

"Jaelyn," Daniel said. "I am pretty sure you don't want to know right away."

"Daniel is right," said the man in black who Cisco said was Harry. "You need to be less stressed before you take on the knowledge of your...condition."  
Jaelyn sighed and said, "Alright, if all of you think I'm not well enough to know of my own health, then fine. I guess I'll rest until you do think so." She really disliked how her friends and their friends thought that she was incapable of knowing her own health.

Everyone left the room and let her go to sleep. Jaelyn was still not very happy, but she just wanted to get it over with so she could figure out what was going on and get back to work.

When she woke up three hours later, she didn't even have a headache. She tried to sit up carefully and she felt fine. She got up out of the bed and she was completely fine.

"Okay, maybe now they'll tell me what else I need to know," Jaelyn said to absolutely no one. "I'm not stressed at all right now."

She walked out of the room and tried to find where the others were, but Daniel and Bianca found her in the hall.

They saw her and said, "What are you doing?" Bianca said. "You're supposed to be in bed."

"I know," Jaelyn replied. "But I rested and I'm not stressed at all. Now please, I want to know what is going on."

Bianca and Daniel still looked a little worried, but they also looked relieved they didn't have to hide anything anymore.

"Okay," Daniel said. "We'll take you the others and they can explain it. We actually don't really know what's going on either."  
When they got to the cortex, everyone was working on something and talking to someone on speaker phone. Daniel and Bianca looked a little surprised, but they headed in anyway.

Cisco, who was typing frantically, said, "You need to go towards the east entrance. Be careful because it looks like he found the weapons in this place."

"Got it," said the voice on the speaker. Jaelyn thought it sounded fairly familiar.

Bianca noticed that Jaelyn was getting curious and asked Cisco, "Uh, are we ready for Jaelyn to know about this and everything else?"  
Nobody knew they were there, so Caitlin and Cisco nearly fell out of their chairs. A few seconds later, there was a burst of wind and a man in a red suit was in the middle of the room. As Jaelyn looked closer, she noticed it was Barry, the taller brunette man whom she met right after she woke up from the headaches. She also noticed that the suit he was in was the Flash's suit. She was so surprised she was lost for words.

Bianca face palmed and said, "Well, there goes that."

"Well, Aspen is in the pipeline, and everyone in that building is safe," Barry said with a smile, but as soon as he saw Jaelyn gaping at him, he added while gesturing to her, "And I just did that, didn't I?"

Daniel sighed and replied, "Yeah, you did. We weren't sure she was ready to know about you yet."  
Jaelyn was plenty surprised but soon she mostly got over it. She really just wanted to get to the answer she was looking for.

"Guys, I'm ready to know what's going on," she said with a bit of annoyance in her voice. "I've rested, just like you said to, and now I'm ready, so just get on with it and tell me what on earth is wrong with me!"

As she got more and more angry, the granite counter she was touching turned more and more into gold. Everyone backed away from her. Cisco pointed at the counter and said, "That's what's wrong with you. You're a meta-human who can turn objects and other materials into another kind of material, like rock into gold, or even water to poison." Caitlin glared at him, but he just said, "What? She wanted to know and she needed to know. So now she does."

Jaelyn was very stunned, but she immediately stopped turning the counter into gold and reversed the change somehow. She felt a little bit dizzy, but sat down and relaxed. In a few minutes, she was fine. She decided that she wanted to go home and relax there so that she could go to work the next day, so she said to all the others, "I think I want to go home for a while. I'll come back tomorrow if you want, though," and left to go. She really didn't want to believe any of this was happening, but she also wanted to accept it. Somehow, she was going to figure out why and how this had happened to her and what Jeremy Aspen was doing in her lab that day.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When Jaelyn got home, she experimented a little bit with her powers. She was a scientist, so that was natural to her. Find out something new, learn how it works by experimenting.

She started out simple with trying to turn a strip of plastic into metal. She closed her eyes, concentrated and flowed her thoughts and emotions into turning it into something else. Anything else. She thought about how startled she was about everything going on. She thought about how confused, angry, sad and shocked she was. Eventually, the plastic felt like a different texture. She opened her eyes and looked at the strip in her hand.

It wasn't metal, it was rock, but it was a start. _If I concentrate on specific emotions, maybe I can control it a little more,_ she thought.  
So, Jaelyn got another strip of plastic and tried again. She focussed on her anger only this time. Soon, she felt the plastic become hard and warm. She opened her eyes and looked in her hand. There was a warm piece of metal where the plastic strip used to be.

She thought she figured it out. Anger is hard and hot tempered. It makes perfect sense that anger would turn plastic or, as she assumed, any material into metal or something similar.

Suddenly, her head started pounding again. _Okay, maybe it's time to stop for the day,_ she thought.

Once she cleaned up and wrote a little bit about her results, Jaelyn got some dinner and went to bed, hoping that her head would feel better in the morning.  
When she woke up, her head felt better, so she got ready to go to work. She was really happy she felt better, because she was in the middle of a chain of experiments and was excited to get back to them. There was so much work to be done after the incident.

Once she got to Mercury Labs, Jaelyn's phone rang. It was Daniel. She answered it and said, "Hey Daniel. What do you need?"  
"Hi, Jaelyn," he replied. "I just wanted to call to tell you to be careful today. I'm pretty sure that that Aspen guy will attack you again, and I don't want you or anyone else in that building to get hurt again. Just please be careful."

Jaelyn was a little surprised by his call, but she understood why he was concerned. She was thinking about the same thing, too. "Of course, Daniel," she responded. "I'm just as worried about myself as you all are, believe me. But I'm not going to let something like this ruin my life. I have an amazing life, and I'm not going to let anything get in the way. I'll be careful, I promise. You stay safe, too, okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Daniel replied, more relieved. "See you at Jitters after work? It is Thursday."

Jaelyn forgot that it was Thursday. Every Thursday, she, Daniel, and Bianca all went to the local coffee shop, Jitters, after they got off of work. They usually just hung out and talked about their day at work, but she had a feeling that tonight would be a little different.

"Yeah, of course," she said. "See you tonight."

"See you tonight."

After she hung up, Jaelyn walked into Mercury Labs expecting everything to be almost normal. Obviously it wouldn't completely normal, but she figured it couldn't be all that bad. She was wrong.

When she got inside the enormous building, everyone was hurrying about, but that was normal. However, when she got to the floor her office was on, there was caution tape everywhere, especially the area where her office and lab were. There were police officers everywhere.

 _Wait,_ she thought. _Police officers? Maybe Bianca or those guys, Barry and Joe, are here._

She looked around and, sure enough, both of them were there along with the man that she thought was Joe. Bianca was talking to some of the employees, trying to see what she could get out of them, Barry was taking a look around, even though he knew what happened, and Joe was doing pretty much everything else.

Jaelyn climbed under the police tape, walked over to Bianca as she was finishing up an interview with an employee and said, "I just got here. It's almost completely chaos. Have you seen or heard anything we can use?"

Bianca turned to her and said, "Oh, hey! No, I haven't gotten any information or evidence or anything to help us figure out how to stop Aspen."

"Well, that's unfortunate," Jaelyn replied. Barry and Joe noticed that Jaelyn was there and walked over. She was about to ask if they found anything, but Joe spoke first.

"In case you were going to ask," he said, "Neither of us have found anything either."

"Darn," Jaelyn said. "Well, I need to clean up my office and work. Maybe tonight we can focus on this more. I mean, obviously, you guys at the CCPD will work on this more, but I really don't want to do this right now. Bianca, after we go get coffee, we'll go to S.T.A.R. Labs. Sound like a plan?"

Everyone nodded their heads, so she said goodbye and went to her office. It was a total wreck. There were reports and spare papers scattered everywhere. Not to mention all the chemicals and materials.

Jaelyn sighed and said, "This is going to be a long day."


End file.
